"Light is making your body later."

In the main f.lux window, there is some text in the upper left-hand corner which says, "Light is making your body later."

At different times, it will say, "Light is making your body earlier."

I presume what we're trying to get across here is that exposure to the blue screen light is making my body feel sleepy later or earlier. As it stands, the current statements read like they may be missing a few words.

It is referring to your biological circadian rhythm. The only other way to say the same thing is by putting a paragraph on the window. They have tried very hard to come up with other ways to say this, but everything ends up being too wordy and lengthy for the f.lux window.

It's proper English though. I can assure you of that. When you understand what it's saying, you realize just how perfect the English is here.

@TwoCables
"Light is making your body later", is referring to the light from the screen and halogen light then? :3
a) "Artificial light is making your body later".
b) "Natural light is making your body earlier".

It's just saying that light exposure at that time is making your body earlier or later, whichever it says. It is in accordance with your local time, the sunrise/sunset, and your configured Wake Time. That's any light. It doesn't matter where it's coming from. Light is light. It makes no difference what the source is.

I'm just trying to say that while sunlight is indeed extremely powerful and artificial light is extremely wimpy by comparison, you can still use artificial light to completely disrupt and/or suppress melatonin production whenever you want and easily kill a well-established healthy circadian rhythm - all with only artificial light, regardless of the source of that light (meaning, normal house lights and computer monitors, tablets, TVs, etc.). If you don't believe me, try this:

Do really well for an entire week or even a month with avoiding bright light in the last ~3-4 hours before going to sleep at night (especially light that contains large amounts of blue light), and wake up and immediately expose yourself to 10+ minutes of sunlight. The longer, the better. Or wake up just before sunrise and allow the sunrise to get you going. Be consistent with this. So, very dim warm-colored light for the last ~3-4 hours at night before going to sleep, and very bright light immediately upon waking for a good while.

Then after that experimental period, go ahead and let yourself be exposed to bright light in the last ~3-4 hours before going to sleep at night. Don't even use f.lux: allow yourself to be exposed to the bright computer monitor all the way up until the very last minute before turning the lights off and going to sleep. Do that for a few days and then you'll see that even though artificial light is extremely wimpy in comparison to sunlight, the human body is still VERY affected by it. Your melatonin production will be completely prevented up until you turn all the lights off and lay down to go to sleep, except it takes 2-3 hours for enough melatonin to be produced for the body to be ready for sleep. By the time enough melatonin is produced, you will only have 3-4 hours left before you have to get up. So, it'll kinda feel like you only got 3-4 hours of sleep.

So, even though we can't use artificial light to replace sunlight, it can still wreak havoc on us if we are using too much artificial light at night in those critical last few hours before going to sleep. Those hours should be spent unwinding with dim warm-colored light.

Try this tonight: do a perfect job of unwinding with very dim warm-colored light. Use f.lux with the warmest setting you can tolerate (for me, that's actually 800K), and reduce your monitor's brightness almost as low as it goes. For me, I have to reduce it all the way down to 0 because it's a gaming monitor and so even the lowest setting is still very bright. Then, just before you are ready to turn everything off and go to sleep, bring your indoor lighting back to full brightness and disable or exit f.lux and put your monitor's brightness back to where you have it during the day. You will instantly notice a huge difference in how you feel at that moment because your melatonin production was halted.

Circadian ryhthm is not affected by the light itself but by not going to bed at the same hour (just when you are prolonging your daily activity, or when you're adding or removing artificial hours to your body with plane jet-lag journeys to the West/East). You can easily move your circadian ryhtm as you wish, towards or backwards, and this makes possible the night work shifts and also the rotational shiftwork, both very important for the human life. Arey they bad for the health? Yes, these kind of works are really bad as hell in short and long term for the family, social life and physical and mental health of the worker. Anyway, you have wrote nearly the same as I did: the source matters, and mostly artificial light depends on the type of dispositive you're using. .__.

People are using computers with screen devices from decades ago, and eyestrain was a big problem for some people in the past and probably in current time in older computers with no Windows 10 1703 Creators Update. Fortunately, we all have available f.lux and other similar software for our old systems to help us to reduce the eyestrain and to reduce the difficulties while trying to sleep, good news for us all! However, I just simply pointed out in my first post of this topic that there is no natural sunlight at the night, so I wrote "Artificial light is making your body later", referring myself to the light from the screens and halogen lights by night, because the natural light only makes your body later when jet-lag to the West. .__.

I apologize if I wrote any inconvenience due to any possible misunderstanding, because my english level is not as good as I really desire. :(

@lorna and @herf should answer at this point. They know the science extremely well. I'm saying that I know I'm right about this, but they can prove it. All I can do is just say "yeah, this is how it is but that's all I know." That's too flimsy, so I need Lorna and Mike to provide an answer now.

I don't think it matters whether or not the grammar and English is correct. If I can't understand what it's trying to say, it needs clarification. Also, did anyone in this thread actually clarify what the hell it means? I've read the whole page and still haven't the slightest what the damn sentence is trying to tell me.

It needs to clarify two things:

A.) Later than what? What is getting later? My body can't physically be 'later' without there to be something later...than.
B.) What light?

I'm positive it should just say "Your sleep cycle is becoming later".

Also, I COMPLETELY disagree with the guy who said it's a perfectly good English sentence. Your body can't be late or early; unless it's late TO something, or it's late in DOING something. Your body just is unless there is a verb attached to the sentence. Everything about this sentence screams incorrect, unless you assume everyone that uses the app, unlike me, is able to associate the fact that the app appears to want to be a sleep cycle planner (which it isn't), it's a goddamn screen dimmer.

The only other way to say the same thing is by putting a paragraph on the window.

Idea 1) What's wrong with a paragraph in the window, if it makes sense?

Idea 2) Alternately, if space in the window is limited, what about a link to a webpage with coherent, concise paragraphs of what you're trying to say?

Idea 3) Are you sure that instead of "Light is making your body later," you don't have room for "Exposure to light is keeping you from getting tired, and you're waking up in 6 hours! Go to sleep!!" Is that too much of a paragraph?

The only other way to say the same thing is by putting a paragraph on the window.

What's wrong with a paragraph, if it makes sense?

Alternately, if space in the window is limited, what about a link to a webpage with coherent, concise paragraphs of what you're trying to say?

Are you sure that instead of "Light is making your body later," you don't have room for "Exposure to light is keeping you from getting tired, and you're waking up in 6 hours! Go to sleep!!" Is that too much of a paragraph?

-neil-

Nothing personal, but that's too much to read for this kind of an app or program. When I tried to read it while imagining that I was reading it on the f.lux window, I stopped at around "tired,". I don't have a short attention span (just take a look at some of my extremely long posts on here for proof), but I do know that the average person out there isn't going to read much more than just a few words on a window of a program like this one. That's one of the reasons they are trying to find the shortest possible sentence to say what they are trying to say.

It's not just too much to read though. It's also not entirely accurate. It's possible to be very tired even though you're being exposed to too much blue light. What's happening though with too much light exposure after being awake for most of the day is, your circadian rhythm is being shifted in an unhealthy direction. Light is making your body later.

So, light exposure too late in the day isn't keeping you from being tired. It's shifting your "clock" to be later, and it's possible to be completely unaware of it. That's the problem most people are facing these days. That's why Michael and Lorna are working hard to help people understand these things. Yes, "Light is making your body later" isn't a common statement in today's world, but it is still absolutely 100% grammatically correct.

Thanks @neil-j - feedback (like yours) on this particular text has been a valuable conversation for us. We'd love to put a better description in, it's one of the weirder and more interesting aspects of human biology, so when we put in more specific information we want to get it really right. Like @TwoCables mentioned, there are many variables so sometimes brevity is the right first approach, even if it needs an update later.

Thanks @neil-j - feedback (like yours) on this particular text has been a valuable conversation for us. We'd love to put a better description in, it's one of the weirder and more interesting aspects of human biology, so when we put in more specific information we want to get it really right. Like @TwoCables mentioned, there are many variables so sometimes brevity is the right first approach, even if it needs an update later.

Thank you.

Perhaps you need a link on the window that says "What does this mean?" that points to a web page explaining what it means. It would need to be immediately to the right of the text saying "Light is making your body later."

@twocables yes! that is most likely what we'll do, we haven't yet because it turns out that writing that page correctly has added years of new research to our todo list...

I had a feeling that was one of the problems you were facing. Perhaps for now you could make a simple page that explains it in simple terms, but with a statement that you are still doing research on this to create a much more informative and educational resource. At least that way, everyone who sees this and gets confused can at least have a way to clear up their confusion on their own without having to post on here. I think most people would be fine with a very simple explanation that takes just a minute or less to read.

Believe me though, I know all too well the whole desire of giving people your very best (only when it's finished and ready to be seen) instead of giving them something that's just crossing the border of "just good enough" while you still work on finishing the masterpiece that will blow everyone away. Sometimes it's best to just give everyone something that will satisfy them in the meantime. Besides, in today's world, I doubt anyone would want to read anything that is much more than a few sentences long anyway, says the guy who writes extremely long posts. :)